Walter Wolf is the Canadian who helped save Lamborghini

In tough times, Wolf helped keep Lamborghini afloat, and his passion also helped bring the Countach to new heights

Walter Wolf's passion for technical excellence would also take the Countach to new heights.

Supplied, Joe Sackey

Walter Wolf, the Canadian Lamborghini man, is rarely seen without his Ray-Bans.

Supplied, Joe Sackey

If the Lamborghini Miura is the most beautiful car ever made, then the Countach is the most surprising.

Supplied, Joe Sackey

During the 1970s, Walter Wolf hob-nobbed with the elite of the sport of kings, lunching with Enzo Ferrari, talking tactics with James Hunt, lending Gilles Villeneuve the keys to his Ferrari 512bb.

Supplied, Joe Sackey

In its day, Walter Wolf's Lamborghini looked like a spaceship.

Supplied, Joe Sackey

“Countach” is a term used to express delight at the sight of a pretty girl – but as you might expect, it's a bit more R-rated than that.

Supplied, Joe Sackey

It is 1975, you’re on holiday, and you’ve just realized you’re being followed by a flying saucer. But flying saucer’s not the right phrase – the wide, flat, razor-edged presence that’s filling the rearview mirror is surely a spaceship, but it’s no eerie spinning disc.

The twisty road through the Swiss Alps reveals a straight, and you grasp the wheel of your rental Renault tightly and push the accelerator right to the floor. The revs rise, and the small car gamely lifts its nose.

With a V12 howl, an apparition in red pulls out and lances forward into ludicrous speed. It accelerates as if propelled by afterburners, and howls like shredding steel – in a moment it’s around you and gone, slinging round the corners as if attached to the road like a slot car.

“Countach” is a term used to express delight at the sight of a pretty girl – but as you might expect, it’s a bit more R-rated than that.Supplied /
Joe Sackey

You only glimpse it for a moment, and your memory is a jumble of images: black, blistered wheel-arches; a gigantic wing; steamroller rear tires. As the futuristic monstrosity bellows angrily, its battle cry echoing off the lofty peaks as it races out of sight, you can’t help but ask yourself, “Did- did that thing have a Canadian flag on the back of it?”

It did.

If the Lamborghini Miura is the most beautiful car ever made – and I would suggest it is – then the Countach is the most surprising. In the 1970s, when it was introduced, the world had simply never seen anything like it: angular, aggressive, angry.

As rumour has it, the car got its name from the Piedmontese exclamation of famed car designer Nuccio Bertone upon first glimpsing a shape hewn from folded sheetmetal. “Countach” is a term used to express delight at the sight of a pretty girl – but as you might expect, it’s a bit more R-rated than that. Use it around your Italian grandmother and expect to receive a clip ’round the ear.

It was, quite simply, a supercar of a type the world had never seen. As far as Walter Wolf was concerned, however, it really wasn’t good enough.

Speaking to the former Canadian oil baron in his home at a sprawling ranch in Kamloops, B.C., the man they called “Wolfman” is blunt in his assessment of Italy’s best-known four-wheeled explosion. “225-mm Michelin tires,” he says, “were not enough to handle the power.”

Rarely seen without his signature Ray-Ban Generals, Walter Wolf is a legend in Canadian motorsport. During the 1970s, he hob-nobbed with the elite of the sport of kings, lunching with Enzo Ferrari, talking tactics with James Hunt, lending Gilles Villeneuve the keys to his Ferrari 512bb.

Walter Wolf, the Canadian Lamborghini man, is rarely seen without his Ray-Bans.Supplied /
Joe Sackey

This last may have been a bit of a mistake. The French-Canadian’s off-track driving style was just as wild as his on-track antics and the drive to Modena to have the car serviced did not go well. “By the time he came back,” Wolf says, “I needed to have it serviced again. New tires… new brakes.”

Not that the cost seemed to bother Wolf — hardly anyone could tell you just how much he was worth in the 1970s. His assets were in the multiple millions, made by dint of sheer single-mindedness. His family emigrated to Canada in the late 1950s, and he started from the ground up to build a vast business empire.

Below the ground, as it happens, is where he first gained traction, scuba diving on oil rigs in the North Sea. With the boom of the oil industry buoying his fortunes, his company grew by leaps and bounds, to the point where he could afford to indulge in his passions.

At first, these included racing behind the wheel himself. As a trained helicopter pilot, Wolf had the skills to handle high-strung machinery, and participated in rally racing and later circuit racing. A massive high-speed accident would garner him a chiding from his advisors. “They said I had to stop,” he chuckles, “that I cannot run a business and be a cowboy on the racetrack.”

In its day, Walter Wolf’s Lamborghini looked like a spaceship.Supplied /
Joe Sackey

As a solution, he bought a Formula One team.

Meanwhile, Lamborghini’s fortunes were perhaps not so ascendant. While the machines the company made were breathtaking, the exotic car business was fragile and temperamental – not unlike the machines they built.

At first, Walter Wolf was just a customer, but a good one. He bought four Miuras in succession, owning each for not much more than a year or two. He owned perhaps the last of the cars ever assembled, one put together especially for him in the mid-1970s, gold with black accents. He also owned one of the ill-fated LM002 off-road vehicles. “Undriveable in the snow or the wet,” he says, “They were fitted with tires made for sand, for the Saudi Arabian national guard. The clutch wasn’t strong enough either.”

As Lamborghini struggled to stay afloat, Wolf’s passion for the cars threw them a life-preserver. While his company wouldn’t buy them outright, his money and influence helped keep Lamborghini solvent through difficult years. His passion for technical excellence would also take the Countach to new heights.

Wolf would both be instrumental in bringing Formula One to Canada, and bringing Canada to the world of Formula One. Aside from the aforementioned connection with Villeneuve, perhaps Canada’s best-loved racing driver, his black-and-gold racing team would carry the Maple Leaf on their cars as they took victory in Argentina, Montreal, and Monaco. “I am a proud Canadian,” he declares forcefully, “Canada has been very good to me. It is, I think, the best country in the world.”

During the 1970s, Walter Wolf hob-nobbed with the elite of the sport of kings, lunching with Enzo Ferrari, talking tactics with James Hunt, lending Gilles Villeneuve the keys to his Ferrari 512bb.Supplied /
Joe Sackey

First buying a share in the Williams F1 team, Wolf then snapped up the assets of the bankrupt Hesketh racing – you may remember overlapping scenes from the recent Ron Howard movie Rush. The inaugural year of racing was a great success, with the Cosworth V8 powered WR1 car taking the win in the very first race of the 1977 season, piloted by South African Jody Scheckter.

Earlier than this, Wolf purchased one of the first Countachs, an LP400 in white, and found it wanting. Parallel with his experience in Formula One racing, he began to request changes to the car. Money was no object.

“[Gian Paolo] Dallara is, in my opinion, the best engineer in the world, by far.” Lamborghini’s head of engineering, Dallara was intimately involved with the chassis design of the Countach, and would work with Wolf to create his specialized cars.

The first creation, made in red and black with maple leaf insignia running throughout, had a number of small changes that were deceptively complicated. It was one of the first Countachs to sport the massive adjustable rear wing that would become de rigeur, and its hulking wheel-arches housed enormous 335-series tires. No road-going car had ever before been fitted with such gigantic rubber, and for a good reason – none existed.

Wolf turned to Pirelli, who was developing a new high-performance tire, and had them create the specific sizing for his own car. The cost must have been astronomical, but it could have been worse.

If the Lamborghini Miura is the most beautiful car ever made, then the Countach is the most surprising.Supplied /
Joe Sackey

“If you are not known,” Wolf says, “you’d end up paying more for the brakes than for the entire car.” Along with his motorsport connections, he began using knowledge gleaned from the way his Formula One cars operated at high-speed to tweak the suspension and handling of the Countach.

The second car, painted bright blue with Canadian flags on the front fenders, had its engine enlarged to 4.8L in order to give enough power to deal with the drag of the added aerodynamics and bigger tires. This was still not enough for Wolf, and he had a third car made, this time in a darker blue, that featured huge eight-piston brakes that were adjustable from inside the cockpit.

Almost everything about the car was changed, from a specially made 5.0L engine producing nearly 500 hp, to a very quick 7:1 steering system, to upgraded brakes. The suspension on the car was different from a normal Countach, replaced entirely in the rear, and reinforced up front.

There were still some limits. “Past 300 km/h, the front end moved around a lot,” Wolf says, “Tire technology wasn’t as good in the 1970s as it is today.”

Lamborghini would take the lessons learned in developing Wolf’s cars and build first the LP400S and later the LP500S. He was, effectively, part of a road-going R&D department.

Today, settled in the Thompson river valley, Wolf is more likely to be found behind the wheel of a pickup than a supercar. F1 champion James Hunt would drive for Wolf Racing briefly, but the sun was setting on both. Wolf’s Formula One adventure never regained the glory of that first heady season, and he sold the team to Emerson Fittipaldi in 1979.

He also sold his Countachs, one of which went to Japan, another to a museum, the third to unknown private hands. “I am not a collector,” Wolf says, simply, “I am a pilot. I owned them just for the personal enjoyment.”

He does retain two special cars, a Diablo which he says is, “still a car that you have to drive.” The other is a Mercedes-Benz 600 limousine which was with him on that glorious day when Wolf Racing won at Monaco.

While these past few years have been marred by accusations of involvement in the Patria bribery case – which Wolf has strongly denied – his legacy to Canadian motorsport can’t be overstated. The WR1 racing car of the winning 1977 season sits in the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame, into which Walter Wolf was inducted in 1998.

The way his story entwines with that of Lamborghini is perhaps not as well-known, but no less important. “With the direct steering,” he says, speaking of his last machine, “you hold the car in your hands, like a Formula One car.”